Thursday saw the last five preliminary events of the 2014 World Series of Poker in action, highlighted by the victory of Matt Grapenthien in the Event #61: $10,000 Seven-Card Stud Championship following an exciting final table.

There were just 24 left from a starting field of 2,563 in Event #60: $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em, and after working through 10 more one-hour levels just two players remained. After battling heads-up for two-and-a-half hours and nearly 200 hands, Brandon Hall and Salman Jaddi will be returning this afternoon to continue play to determine which of the two will be winning the Event #60 bracelet and $614,248 first prize.

During the afternoon that field of 24 quickly worked down to a nine-handed final table, with Scott Baumstein (24th, $14,255), Evan McNiff (19th, $17,577), and Erwann Pecheux (17th, $21,936) among those hitting the rail early.

Those pots helped Hall take a lead into heads-up play with about 8.2 million to Jaddi’s 3.2 million, but Jaddi soon seized the advantage and would in fact build up over 9.6 million at one point before Hall slowly chipped back to even things up.

By the time they reached the end of Level 30 and bagged up, they’d reached Hand #320 of the final table and 198 hands of heads-up play, with Jaddi ahead with 6,820,000 to Hall’s 4,725,000.

Meanwhile just nine returned from the 102 starters in the $10K Seven-Card Stud Championship, with Todd Brunson coming back to a big chip lead and hopes of earning his second WSOP bracelet.

Following the early knockout of Jesse Martin in ninth ($26,299) who fell in a hand against Hellmuth, the official final table began with 90-year-old Henry Orenstein the first to go in eighth, also falling to Hellmuth. Orenstein became the oldest person to cash at the WSOP this summer, let alone make a final table.

Henrik Hecklen next went out in seventh, then Hellmuth followed in sixth, the finish marking his seventh cash of the summer, his 107th career WSOP cash overall, and his 51st WSOP final table.

Grapenthien had a small chip lead to begin heads-up play, but Brunson would quickly move in front to whittle Grapenthien down and assume a 3-to-1 lead. But “Grapes” would come back and eventually the pair would exchange the chip advantage a half-dozen times before Grapenthien at last edged ahead to take a commanding lead.

Finally the last hand arrived, one that saw the two exchange bets all of the way down to seventh street until Brunson called all in on the end with / / while Grapenthien had / / .

Grapenthien then tabled his down cards — — to show he’d made a pair of eights. Brunson only showed one of his — a five — before mucking, and Grapenthien had earned his first gold bracelet.

Event #61: $10,000 Seven-Card Stud Championship Final Table Results

Position

Player

Payout

1

Matt Grapenthien

$268,473

2

Todd Brunson

$165,891

3

James Obst

$103,895

4

Ben Yu

$75,227

5

Steve Landfish

$58,793

6

Phil Hellmuth

$46,885

7

Henrik Hecklen

$38,073

8

Henry Orenstein

$31,419

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After Wednesday’s first Day 1 flight of Event #62: The $1,111 Little One for One Drop saw 1,492 total entries, there were more on Thursday’s Day 1b to bring the total number for the event to 4,496, a bit shy of the 4,756-entry field for this tournament one year ago.

That turnout meant a total prize pool of $4,046,400, scheduled to be divided among the top 468 finishers. After play concluded last night there are 885 players left to advance from both Day 1 flights to Friday’s Day 2, with Gerald Karlic managing to end the night bagging the most chips with 79,500, giving him the overall chip lead heading into Day 2. Other top finishers from Day 1b included Mykhailo Krasnytskyi, Maurice Hawkins, and Ray Henson.

A big first prize of $637,539 awaits this weekend’s winner.

Event #62: The $1,111 Little One for One Drop Combined End of Day 1a/1b Top 10 Chip Counts

There were 85 returners for Day 2 of Event #63: $1,500 Six-Handed 10-Game Mix yesterday from the starting field of 445, and after another day of rotating through 10 different poker variants just nine players remain with New Zealand’s Jan Suchanek finishing the night with big chip lead, having edged close to 500,000 while nearest challenger Bryn Kenney ended with just under 300,000.

Andrey Zaichenko (in third) and Randy Ohel (in fourth) will also be part of the formidable group returning for Friday’s final day to fight for the bracelet and $153,220 first prize.

Finally the Event #64: $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha Championship got underway yesterday and as expected drew a big field of 418, exceeding the 386 who played in the event a year ago. That group built a prize pool of $3,929,200 to be split among the top 45 finishers, with a huge $923,379 payday awaiting the winner.

After one day of play 132 players were able to bag chips, with Chance Kornuth collecting the most of anyone with 338,200, just a touch ahead of Ruslan Dykshteyn who ended the night with 338,000.

On Tap

There are four events still to be decided before — and as — the Main Event gets underway tomorrow. Two of them — the heads-up battle in the $1,500 NLHE (#60) and the 10-Game Mix (#63) — will find winners today, while the “Little One for One Drop” (#62) and $10K PLO (#64) move into their second days of play with plans to complete this weekend.

Here’s the full schedule of bracelet events for this Fourth of July (all times PDT):

1:00 p.m. — Event #60: $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em (Day 4 of 4)

1:00 p.m. — Event #62: The $1,111 Little One for One Drop (Day 2 of 4)

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